.ssh/config: “Bad configuration option: UseKeychain” on Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6

Question

I am trying to set up my ssh config on the Mac (Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6) in such a way that it stores the passphrase for my ssh key in the keychain. Previously I could do that with

ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa

But recently this doesn't seem to work anymore. Following this article there seems to be a change in the behaviour of the ssh config in Mac OS > 10.12.2 and the recommended way to fix this issue is to add UseKeychain yes to your ssh config. So here's my .ssh/config section the Host *:

Host *
  Port 22
  ServerAliveInterval 60
  ForwardAgent yes
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes

When trying to ssh to a foreign host, I get the following error message:

$ ssh my-host
/Users/USER/.ssh/config: line 16: Bad configuration option: usekeychain

Any ideas why this happens and how I can fix it? Thanks!

Answer 1

Try to specify another option, namely IgnoreUnknown like below

IgnoreUnknown UseKeychain
UseKeychain yes

You can find more info about this here.

Answer 2

The accepted answer helped me but did not completely solve my problem because I had multiple options that were bad. Here is an example of what it might look like if you have this issue:

Host *
  IgnoreUnknown AddKeysToAgent,UseKeychain
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Answer 3

I just commented out the line and scp/ssh started working for me again.

Answer 4

It's the capital -K try lowercase -k!!

ssh-add -k ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Enter passphrase for /Users/tom/.ssh/id_rsa:
Identity added: /Users/tom/.ssh/id_rsa (/Users/tom/.ssh/id_rsa)

Answer 5

Instead of ssh-add type ‘open .ssh/id_rsa’ and add it to the keychain

The UseKeychain option never appeared as bad on my config, but I have in the beginning, before any other host, the following

Host *
UseKeychain yes 

Host (...)